Who will pay for dishonesty if the "seven day no reason return" rule is abused?
2024-07-17
The vast majority of dresses have been worn, and upon opening the packaging, a foul odor wafts through the air, making it impossible to resell and only scrapped. Recently, Mr. Yao, the owner of an online store in Jinhua, Zhejiang, was heartbroken when faced with over 400 returned dresses. After checking the return orders, Mr. Yao found that these orders were collective returns, and he directly lost nearly 8000 yuan, which also led to a surge in the return rate of the online store. The higher the return rate, the lower the ranking of the store, and the lower the weight will be affected. Such incidents are not accidental. Some time ago, the topic of "an e-commerce women's clothing merchant roast that the return rate was as high as 80%" hit the hot search. Many netizens oppose this practice of buyers, believing that they have abused the "seven day no reason return" rule, which is selfish and unethical behavior. It not only seriously damages the interests of merchants, but also affects the integrity of the market environment. It is understood that high return rates have become a prominent issue for some e-commerce platforms. According to the Consumer Rights Protection Law, except for special goods, if the operator sells the goods through online, television, telephone, mail order and other means, the consumer has the right to return the goods within seven days from the date of receipt without giving a reason. However, some consumers, in order to obtain improper benefits, recklessly use rules such as "seven day no reason return" in online shopping to "fleece", causing some merchants to complain endlessly. The interviewed experts believe that consumers should follow the principle of good faith when returning goods without reason, and should not use the unreasonable return rules to harm the legitimate rights and interests of operators and other consumers. E-commerce platforms and regulatory authorities should actively improve policies, strengthen supervision, and enhance technology to jointly maintain a fair, healthy, and orderly online shopping environment. In June of this year, Mr. Wang, an online store owner from Guangzhou, Guangdong, faced a large number of return requests from customers. On the eve of International Children's Day, some parents went to his online store to purchase children's shoes to meet their children's needs for participating in holiday activities. After the event, some parents returned their shoes, some of which were severely worn out. Similar things happen every year. This phenomenon is not limited to individual consumers, and some schools also have situations where clothing is ordered in bulk and most of the clothing is returned after the event ends Mr. Wang said angrily. It is reported that due to individual differences in body shape and aesthetics, the return rate of clothing products has always been high, especially women's clothing, which is a "disaster area". Some people even specialize in researching how to return clothes they have worn to merchants and boast about their "success stories" online. Some sellers have reported that most platforms require a "seven day no reason return" policy, and there is also shipping insurance, so buyers can return without any losses. But for sellers, the returned goods need to be reprocessed, repackaged, and shipped with shipping fees. The loss of one order may require selling 10 orders to be returned. Chen Dong, a lawyer from Beijing Yinghe Law Firm who has long been interested in the field of e-commerce, introduced that the original intention of launching the "seven day no reason return" rule is to provide online shopping consumers with the same opportunity to inspect and try out products as physical shopping malls, so as to independently decide whether to conduct transactions, fully protecting consumers' right to know and choose. Chen Dong said that this rule applies to goods sold through non face to face sales methods such as the internet, television, telephone, and mail order. In addition, there are also situations where the "four plus one" policy of "seven day no reason return" is not applicable, including fresh and perishable goods such as fruits and vegetables, and digital products downloaded online. To protect consumer rights, the "seven day no reason return" rule has been extended from online to offline. Many large supermarkets and brand chain stores have made no reason return commitments, and some have even extended the return period from seven days to thirty days. In reality, some people use this rule to "willfully" return goods, while others purchase genuine clothing on online stores and falsely return it for various reasons, seeking illegal benefits. In March of this year, the Changning police in Shanghai received a report from a staff member of a sports brand in their jurisdiction, stating that while sorting out online sales orders, they found that someone had purchased a large number of shoes, clothes, and other products on multiple platforms, and later applied for a return on the grounds that the received products had quality problems or were sent incorrectly. However, the actual returned products were second-hand defective products of the same style or low-priced products of the same brand, and the order amount was relatively large. After investigation, Yang and Zhang cooperated to purchase second-hand shoes, which were refurbished and repaired before being sold. In order to seek greater profits, the two purchased the same sports shoes from the official online store multiple times. After receiving the express delivery, they returned the second-hand old shoes to the merchant, while the new shoes were listed on the second-hand trading platform and sold at a price of about 60% off. As of the time of the incident, the two have transferred contracts more than 100 times and illegally profited over 20000 yuan. The use of freight insurance to extract wool has extremely low costs and significant returns. In the fierce market competition, the vicious cycle of low profits forces e-commerce companies to lower prices, but low prices can lead to poor quality of some products, resulting in high return rates, which in turn increases the costs for e-commerce operators and forms a vicious cycle. In addition, the setting of freight insurance provides convenience for consumers and is also one of the reasons for increasing return rates. Founder of a certain women's clothing brand, Fang Jianhua, recently posted a message calling for attention to "mandatory shipping insurance". He believes that with a return rate of up to 60% on e-commerce platforms, opening shipping insurance has become a mandatory requirement for merchants to participate in large-scale promotional activities, which has brought huge burdens to merchants. He roughly calculated that a return order in the clothing industry would incur a cost of about 15 yuan without actual revenue, which is equivalent to the merchant's advertising expenses, packaging materials, and courier fees being wasted. If we calculate a conservative 40% return based on a sales volume of 10 million yuan and a customer order of 200 yuan, the cost of loss would be over 300000 yuan. It is reported that many bloggers have strategies on how to "take advantage of the loopholes in shipping insurance" - by placing an order and returning it, they can earn the difference between the return shipping fee and the compensation from shipping insurance. For example, if a buyer purchases from a live streaming room and then finds a cheap courier to return the item, and returns it for 5 yuan, they can receive a subsidy of 10 yuan for shipping insurance, thus receiving a 5 yuan price difference. The more quantity, the more money you earn. When encountering such buyers, merchants often have no choice. Industry insiders have introduced that some people specialize in renting warehouses to engage in the business of extracting freight insurance wool. The scale of this business operation results in significant profits. Some merchants have stated that the platform is actually cracking down on such users. If abnormal return times and rates are identified, their consumption privileges will be restricted, and in severe cases, their accounts will be banned. However, the cost of registering a new user is very low, and the "wool party" will continuously register new e-commerce accounts using wholesale numbers to continue to profit from shipping insurance. The act of embezzling freight insurance wool is essentially aimed at illegal possession, creating insurance accidents through false transactions, defrauding insurance benefits, disrupting market order, and damaging the interests of honest business owners Lian Dayou, director of Beijing Jingben Law Firm, believes that in the long run, such behavior may lead to an increase in the cost of freight insurance, and the resulting economic losses will be shared by all consumers and businesses. Once the freight insurance policy tightens, it will harm consumers' normal return and exchange rights, and the sales of merchants will also be affected Lian Da has suggestions to comprehensively investigate the existing freight insurance policies, identify and fill loopholes, clearly define the scope and conditions of freight insurance use, increase the punishment for insurance fraud, increase the cost of illegal activities, and form an effective deterrent; We should also make full use of big data and artificial intelligence technology to quickly identify abnormal trading behavior, ensuring that the platform can timely detect and crack down on the behavior of embezzling freight insurance wool. It is understood that there are also individual consumers who have targeted the carefully prepared packaging boxes of the merchants. They take advantage of the platform's return policy and immediately choose to return the goods upon receipt, often citing the reason of 'no longer wanting'. After receiving the return, the merchant found that the original packaging cardboard box was missing and replaced by a thin layer of bubble wrap. Faced with this situation, we often find it difficult to find effective legal basis when defending our rights, and can only bear the economic losses caused by returns for nothing. We also have to spend a lot of time and energy dealing with return matters Some merchants have said so. The Implementation Regulations of the Consumer Rights and Interests Protection Law of the People's Republic of China, which came into effect on July 1 this year, stipulate that consumers who return goods without reason shall follow the principle of honesty and credit, and shall not use unreasonable return rules to harm the legitimate rights and interests of operators and other consumers. The above regulations are newly added regulations aimed at regulating the disorderly transactions that have long abused the right to return goods without reason, and clarifying that the principle of good faith is the fundamental principle of legislation on the right to return goods without reason Lian Da said. Chen Yinjiang, Deputy Secretary General of the Consumer Rights Protection Law Research Association of the China Law Society, introduced that the "seven day no reason return" rule is to protect the legitimate rights and interests of consumers, but the law also stipulates that if the goods returned by consumers have been used or have affected secondary sales, merchants can refuse to return them. Chen Yinjiang said that merchants must comply with the "seven day no reason return" policy in accordance with the law, and those who meet the return conditions should be promptly returned and refunded; For products that do not meet the return criteria, reasonable reasons can be given to refuse the return, especially when products that have been used or have obvious defects cannot be resold to other consumers. Lian Dayou believes that both consumers and operators are market trading entities and should follow the most basic market trading rules, be honest and trustworthy, and consume rationally. When consumers unreasonably abuse the right to return goods without reason and cause damage to the legitimate rights and interests of operators, operators may demand that consumers bear corresponding tort liability according to specific circumstances. Consumers should conduct sufficient market research before shopping, understand the quality, price, and other information of the product, in order to make wise choices Lian Da has called for e-commerce platforms and regulatory authorities to actively improve policies, strengthen supervision, and enhance technology to jointly maintain a fair, healthy, and orderly online shopping environment. Chen Yinjiang suggested that regulatory authorities and consumer associations should increase their publicity efforts on relevant laws, regulations, and consumer knowledge, guide businesses to operate with integrity and abide by the law, and guide consumers to consume rationally and protect their rights in accordance with the law. (New Society)
Edit：Lubaikang Responsible editor：Chenze
Source：legaldaily.com.cn
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